nforested sections, great quantities of soil and
sediment. Beaver-dams catch much of the material eroded from the
hillsides above, and also prevent much erosion along the streams which
they govern. They thus catch and deposit in place much valuable soil,
the cream of the earth, that otherwise would be washed away and
lost,--washed away into the rivers and harbors, impeding navigation
and increasing river and harbor bills.

There is an old Indian legend which says that after the Creator
separated the land from the water he employed gigantic beavers to
smooth it down and prepare it for the abode of man. This is
appreciative and suggestive. Beaver-dams have had much to do with the
shaping and creating of a great deal of the richest agricultural land
in America. To-day there are many peaceful and productive valleys the
soil of which has been accumulated and fixed in place by ages of
engineering activities on the part of the beaver before the white man
came. On both mountain and plain you may still see much of this good
work accomplished by them. In the mountains, deep and almost useless
gulches have been filled by beaver-dams with sediment, and in course
of time changed to meadows. So far as I know, the upper course of
every river in the Rockies is through a number of beaver-meadows,
some of them acres in extent.

On the upper course of Grand River in Colorado, I once made an
extensive examination of some old beaver-works. Series of beaver-dams
had been extended along this stream for several miles, as many as
twenty dams to the mile. Each succeeding dam had backed water to the
one above it. These had accumulated soil and formed a series of
terraces, which, with the moderate slope of the valley, had in time
formed an extensive and comparatively level meadow for a great
distance along the river. The beaver settlement on this river was
long ago almost entirely destroyed, and the year before my arrival
a cloudburst had fallen upon the mountain-slope above, and the
down-rushing flood had, in places, eroded deeply into the deposits
formed by the beaver-works. At one place the water had cut down
twenty-two feet, and had brought to light the fact that the deposit
had been formed by a series of dams one above the other, a new dam
having been built or the old one increased in height when the deposit
of sediment had filled, or nearly filled, the pond. This is only one
instance. There are thousands of similar places in the Rockies wh